9 January 2009 (2009-01-09) – present (present)[1]
Related
Petits Meurtres en Famille 2006 (4-part mini-series)
Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie is a French comédie policière (comedic police crime drama) television programme consisting of two series based loosely on Agatha Christie's works of detective fiction, first broadcast on France 2 on 9 January 2009.[2] In English-speaking countries, Series One is titled "The Little Murders of Agatha Christie" and Series Two is titled "Agatha Christie's Criminal Games". Series One takes place in the 1930s with Commissaire (approximately DCI) Larosière (Antoine Duléry) and Inspecteur Lampion (Marius Colucci). Series Two is set in the mid-1950s through early 1960s with Commissaire Swan Laurence (Samuel Labarthe), journalist Alice Avril (Blandine Bellavoir), and Laurence's secretary, Marlène Leroy (Élodie Frenck). Series One streams with English subtitles in the United States on Acorn TV and MHz Choice, Series Two streams with English subtitles in the United States on MHz Choice and in Australia on SBS.[3][4] The thirty-eight episodes to the end of Series Two include adaptations of thirty-six of Christie's works.
A third series, with a new cast and set in 1970s France, was announced in 2019.[1] Although the title bearing Christie's name will remain, most of the planned episodes will be original stories "in the spirit of Christie's works" because the producer felt that the remaining books would be "too difficult to adapt", or because of rights issues in some cases.[5]
Series One: 1930s France (2009–2012)
Overview
Set in northern France in the 1930s, womanising and bombastic Commissaire Jean Larosière and his hapless junior officer Inspecteur Émile Lampion unravel a series of complicated murder cases to reveal the killers.
Cast and characters
Main
Antoine Duléry as Commissaire Jean Larosière (11 episodes)
Marius Colucci as Inspecteur Émile Lampion (11 episodes)
Support
Serge Dubois as police officer (policier) Ménard (9 episodes)
Olivier Carré as medical examiner (médecin légiste) Dr Verdure (5 episodes)
The action has moved to mid-1950s to 1960s Lille, France. Suave, razor-sharp, arrogant, and intolerant – Commissaire Swan Laurence investigates murders with the often unappreciated assistance of reporter Alice Avril and police secretary Marlène Leroy.
Natacha Lindinger as medical examiner Dr Euphrasie Maillol (4 episodes)
Éric Beauchamp as police "cop" (flic) Martin (16 episodes)
Bubulle as Marlène's goldfish Bubulle (27 episodes). Bubulle is a series of fishes kept in the office by Marléne. When each fish expires, Laurence, knowing Marléne's attachment, secretly replaces it with a new fish. In episode 26, Laurence remarks "Bubulle 4".
A movie star appears to commit suicide by poisoning her drink at a dinner party, but Laurence suspects that someone else put the poison there. Avril replaces her on the set while Laurence investigates.
Laurence receives a letter dated months earlier from Émilie Longuet fearing that she will be murdered. On learning that the wealthy old woman is already dead, he orders an exhumation and autopsy which prove she had been poisoned. He and Avril both encounter ghosts who, despite his disbelief, help uncover secrets that are possible motives for all the resident family members, Mrs. Longuet's live-in personal assistant and, to Laurence's horror, his own mother whom he arrests before discovering that the weapon used in a second murder was planted in her room.
A strange, wealthy man induces a dubious Laurence and Avril to attend a dinner party he is hosting with four other guests whom he suggests got away with murder, plus a self-proclaimed former member of France's secret service. When the host is murdered at the party, Laurence investigates. Two guests are subsequently murdered and Laurence himself becomes a suspect before determining the culprit.
Tired of living in poverty and being disrespected as a female journalist, Avril accepts a marriage proposal from Émile Deboucke, a much older man and very rich factory owner whom she barely knows. Avril moves into Deboucke's mansion and is given an executive position at his factory. After a series of murders at the factory and the attempted murders of herself and Marlène, Avril helps Laurence solve the crimes from within. Avril and Deboucke end their engagement amicably.
A famous author and her husband receive anonymous letters threatening that their son will be kidnapped for ransom from their home at a specific time. Despite deploying heavy security, Laurence fails to prevent the kidnapping and is shot in the aftermath. He feigns death to pursue the case without the culprit's knowledge and, with major assistance from Avril, Marlène, and Dr. Maillol, is able to reveal all at his own fake funeral.
After a young secretary is found dead by hanging, Laurence quickly determines it was murder intended to look like suicide. Avril goes undercover as the secretary's replacement to help investigate.
A lady comes to see Laurence in distress because the owner of the popular beauty spa she manages is seeing a much younger man. Laurence is unwilling to get involved, but Marlène persuades Avril to visit the spa; they do so, but are mistaken for a lesbian couple. While there, Marlène finds a man's body at the bottom of the swimming pool, murdered. Laurence arrives at the spa to investigate. During the investigation, Avril discovers that the spa's owner, Emilie, is actually Avril's own mother. Shortly afterwards, Emilie also dies, which is clearly a second murder. Laurence's investigation into both murders turns up strange happenings, such as Emilie's habit of drinking the blood of children, a surrogate pregnancy of one of the spa staff who Emilie recently adopted and wrote into her will, and the alluring wife of a government minister who sedated Emilie to cover up her own affair with Emilie's husband.
While in hospital for injuries incurred in an accident, Avril encounters famous crime author Albert Major but fails to interest Laurence in the author's claim to be writing a book exposing a "perfect murder" that he witnessed years ago. Major becomes the first of several victims murdered grotesquely in the hospital. Avril discovers a secret hospital area with strange goings-on possibly related to the murders, but when Laurence finds no evidence in the room he decides it was just her head injuries causing her imagination to run wild. Laurence eventually realises that everything is indeed connected, catches the culprit, and reaches Avril, the next intended victim, just as she is about to succumb to a poisoned intravenous drip.
When Marlène stumbles into Laurence's office disheveled, disoriented, and deemed to be suffering from depression, he has her admitted to a private psychiatric clinic where he is investigating a murder. But Laurence is arrested as the prime suspect of a second murder at the clinic because he has been having an affair with the victim, the wife of the head of the clinic, and is believed to have been on the premises at the time. Avril goes undercover as a nurse to investigate while Laurence is in jail but he soon joins her by feigning insanity to get himself admitted to the clinic. Marlène's sharp eye for fashion provides the critical clue that puts Laurence on the right track to reveal the murderers.
The Series Two Finale is a musical self-parody, with all the cast breaking out into song and dance throughout.
After a night of drunken revelry that she cannot recall, Avril awakens in bed next to the corpse of young man with a knife in his chest. Laurence has resigned as Commissaire and is about to leave for Washington to work for the FBI but, joined by Marlène, Glissant, and Tricard, he goes to extraordinary lengths, including illegalities, to figure out who is trying to frame Avril for murder and to keep her out of the clutches of her chief antagonists: Laurence's replacement, the psychotic nephew of former Commissaire Larosière, and Carmouille, although she eventually saves the day.
(Antoine Duléry appears as the nephew of Series One's Commissaire Larosière. Original musical-comedy episode;[11] first aired in Italy in 2019, Australia in 2020, and in France in October 2020.[12][13][1])
Series Three: 1970s France
A third series, with a new cast and set in France in the 1970s, was announced in 2019.[1][14]
The first and third episodes are adaptations of, respectively, Endless Night and The Hollow. Other episodes are original stories; according to the producer, they are in the "spirit of Agatha Christie".[15][16][17][18][5]
Overview
The third series is set in the 1970s, again in Lille, France. Commissaire Annie Gréco is aided by police inspector Max Beretta and psychologist Rose Bellecour.
A distinct four-part mini-series, "Petits Meurtres en Famille", adapted from Hercule Poirot's Christmas, was released in 2006. Although Larosière and Lampion are the main characters (played by the same actors), this mini-series is not a prequel or sequel to the later series. However, in this earlier miniseries, Larosière knows who his father is and actually meets him in the story, but in "Un meurtre en sommeil" (Sleeping Murder), Episode 10 of Season 1 of "Les Petits Muertres d'Agatha Christie", Larosière says he doesn't know who his father is and is going to seek out his identity.
